We've Set up what will be our Final New Fed Forums. These forums were previsionary and after hearing opinions and discussing it, we've decided to move. So follow this link, make a user, and start posting on the Brand New Federalist Party Forums!

http://w11.zetaboards.com/federalistparty/index/

The Federalist Party

This Forum Is Now Shut Down - Join The New Forums At: http://w11.zetaboards.com/federalistparty/index/

I am 100% against a division of the eUS Forum being dedicated to the Federalist Party. We have had this forum for years and we should not go and change it now. Thats one of the key things the Feds have- "The most active forum in erep".

I would like to submit a personal appeal to party leadership and the PP to not put an end to our forum!

OK so I just finished meeting with Stanley Ibcus pertaining to our situation.

First - there are two reasons why he has stepped back from eRepublik. The first is complications from an injury he sustained earlier this year which limit the amount of energy he has daily.

Second - he has been hired in real life as a web developer to do a job which occupies what energy he does have.

So his level of involvement at this point is partly legacy and partly whatever we contract from him to do.

He is willing to host our Forum free of charge.

For starters, this provides us with all kinds of benefits which we do not/would not enjoy should we use a free hosting service or the eUS Forums.

We could choose from the variety of Forum software available. Ibcus agrees with PiZ that SMS is the best Forum software currently available for use, but if we decide on something else he would install that for us.

We would have full access to the back end of our Forum as well as full control over who has Admin privilege. With the exception of Stanley Ibcus himself, we would retain full control over who has Admin/Moderator privilege.

We would be provided with daily backups of our Forum. Whomever is designated to receive them, we would be given a backup on a daily basis so that if Ibcus or his server should ever disappear, we would be able to go elsewhere and fully restore our Forum to within a day old.

We would be able to install a variety of plug-in applications which would enhance the functionality of our Forum. For instance, using an installable desktop application, Admins of our forum would be able to utilize an election tracker which would update current election data to the Forum server. Easy Company could also make use of various plug-ins as well. We would retain full control over the functionality of these plug-ins, and the sky (and the API) is the limit in terms of what they could do.

The notion of a web portal is not feasible, however. Because of the eRepublik Terms of Service, a Web Portal would be quickly banned because it would be accessing the eRepbulik server from a single IP address. Therefore, despite how easy it would be to write a web application, it is not realistic.

However, with the use of desktop applications, a variety of features can be implemented to interface with our Forum and eRepublik. Using a desktop application, for instance, we could make a Mass Messenger possible which would be accessed from our Forum via Leadership access, then draw from API, then send through eRepublik.

There is a negligible cost associated with carrying our own domain name - less than $15/year. I am willing to cover that cost for at least the first year, and as long as I hang around.

Any additional costs associated with having the desktop applications developed for us I am also willing to incur provided Leadership is interested in working on developing these tools.

Stanley's option is basically the same as the sub domain hosted on the eUSA Forums Server (but not at the forum itself) except that instead of being paid by donations made by the community, Feds would rely on Stanley to continue paying the hosting.

Personally, my opinion would gravitate towards a separate Fed Forum if anyone is listening, it's pretty clear the advantages to the eUS forum and the obvious negative connotation associated with it, and for my two cents as a new Fed I think the Fed Forum has always had a solid reputation for being active and very tight, and I don't personally think it would benefit by combining with the National one,

And lastly, I know the real reason the forum went down was because I had just joined the party and you didn't want me to be self conscious about my low post count

How the hell did you figure that out Paul? We need to get better poker faces...

FWIW, I am not a fan of the eUS forum idea. We have always valued our autonomy and we would have to relinquish that if we move there, no matter how great or fast the admin team is in giving us what we want. In watching the discussions in leadership over the past 24 hours, there are so many little things that we do to try and tailor the experience for our members that I do not believe will be possible to do on the eUS forums simply because we do not have the amount of control needed to accomplish it.

My vote is to either keep our forums at this address, or move to another hosting site that allows us to retain the level of control we wish over our forum.

If you think moving to the eUSA Forums server idea is bad how is this possibly any better?

It's better for one reason and that is, we take full control of our independent federalist dedicated forum. We aren't looking for traffic, because we are already doing well. The recruitment staff was doing well and will continue to do so.

Call me paranoid, but combining our forum with the eUSAforum might lead to the same problem we are trying to solve today in future. I am sure that most of us do not want this to happen again. We simply don't want to lose our forum again.

I don't see any reason why we shouldn't have our own forum like we always have.

The Feds are just outliers. We go hard, and are to proud/horny for national forum integration. I re-suggest a poll, which I feel would be the most fair, and only within the feds. I see no reason to have the feds in the national forum, and I read ALL of your arguments Oblige. There are many benefits, and few downsides, but the notion of independence is what the feds are about. The only reason for a switch would be this awful baby blue crap.

TrogdortheTroll100 wrote:The Feds are just outliers. We go hard, and are to proud/horny for national forum integration. I re-suggest a poll, which I feel would be the most fair, and only within the feds. I see no reason to have the feds in the national forum, and I read ALL of your arguments Oblige. There are many benefits, and few downsides, but the notion of independence is what the feds are about. The only reason for a switch would be this awful baby blue crap.

I strongly agree with moving out of forumotion, asour own dedicated hosting would provide us with much better options. Forumotion is just way to limited in my option. Although easily used and manged, we lack in functionality extremely. With the use of a newer host and our own fresh phpbb instal or whatever we choose we'd be able to insert much better modules to suit to our needs.

This^. We would operate off of an independent entity, and no one outside of the party would be able to observe our procedure in any way shape or form on the secret areas.

Can't we still have full control over a sub-board, if it were contained within the eusa forums? We'd have our own mods within the Fed enclave and only PiZ and the global mods that could view what we're doing.

Furthermore, the servers that the eusaforums are hosted on are pretty much guaranteed not to lose data forever. They pay a fair amount for it. Since all the worries about servers/hosting/bandwidth/etc are taken on by PiZ and the donators, why *not* make use of it?

Personally, I don't find the argument that "we like to do our own thing" to be a great reason for avoiding a Fed presence on the eusaforums, even from a subjective standpoint. We're just recovering from a total deletion; now would be a great time to go ahead with a move there.

I would really push for a move to the eusa forums. If not a migration, then at the very least a presence.